This group has seen the light of creation
thanks to some guys from Hong Kong who made a device called a Copier. This piece of
hardware was simulating a Cartridge that was plugged into the SNES. The good part of this
Copier was that it had a Communication port on it, so if you knew how to send the data
across, you would be able to use your own PC / Amiga / Atari to send Copied games (roms)
and run them on the SNES, without ever buying the Original software on Cartridge. Since
this Copier also had a Diskdrive connected to it, every other game could be sucked out of
its shell, and stuck on a couple of 1,44 inch disks. The games that got copied in the
beginning where quit small and when compression was used the size was most of the times
reduced by half its original size. So here it started, several groups were formed with the
main goal to release all the new titles that came out for the SNES.

At the time I was still active on the Atari
ST, but software was getting slow on that machine, so I had time to spare. When I heard
the news that games could be copied for this Nintendo Game Console, I watched it closely
and meanwhile gathered all information available. I started out with downloading all the
Tools and Games that made it to the bbs's. In my mind I wanted this Snes + Copier without
a doubt, after I visited some friend who had bought a Copier already my conclusion was
simple.. BUY ! I made known to the other members in Elite that I was scraping the money
together to buy a Snes + Copier , coz it would be a Cool Deal ! I got in contact with an
old member who was selling the Copiers and an Order was placed. A few weeks later the date
was set, money exchanged hands an I was the lucky owner of a SuperMagicom with 16 Mb
memory ! In the beginning only 2 other members bought a copier , but a few months later 3
others followed.

Our main cracker MCA was already given all
the hardware information that I managed to get hold of and he started with coding a
Disassembler on the Atari ST. A few small demo/intro's made it into the Console Scene, and
things were looking good. More companies joined in the rat-race to pump out Games for the
Snes. In the beginning it was mainly Japan that produced the games, then the US joined in
and after a while the European software houses finally caught on as well. After a year of
the release date of the Super Famicom ( jap name for the Super Nintendo ), the software
river flowed at a steady pace..

SnesPac v1.3a was the 65SC816
Editor/Assembler, written by MCA/Elitendo & Corsair/Cynix on the Atari ST.

Here you find the PC version of the
SnesDissasembler.

SnesDissasembler v15-03'95 by MCA [PC .EXE
format]

Making progress

Meanwhile I came in contact with some of
the coders that did the first Demo's, I found out that one of them owned a programmers
manual (hum....very interesting.. ), one of these guys wouldn't mind sending me a copy of
it , if I could send some blank disks in return, 4 seconds later 30 disks were on its way
! A week later a fat package arrived , and we were very happy !

In the same period some of the first
Trainers were being made by Baseline, and the format they used was odd to say the least..,
since a lot of games didn't work for the PAL version of the SNES machine they had to be
fixed.. So the first Slowrom Fixes were made, we have literally done hundreds of them and
most of them selectable from a Trainer Menu.

An intro attempt by Dizzy.A test by Killer Bob.
Featering music from Tim Follin.SnesTracks preview.
Hints & Tips for Snes-owners.

Patch it !

Making fixes and Trainers in the baseline
format was a time consuming deal , and mistakes were quickly made.. So I thought of a new
way of dealing with this, the now so much used IPS patches. IPS stands for International
Patching Standard, and was brought into the scene for PC/Amiga and Atari . In the
beginning there was a bit of confusion, since 3 different people had programmed it. But
when it was bug free it quickly took over, and IPS files started appearing everywhere on
the bbs's. It was also used for Comparing different Language versions. The game files (
ROM Images ) had sometimes only minor differences in the amount of Kb's, and with the IPS
creator the difference could be written into a separate file, which gave as an advantage
that you didn't had to download the whole game again, simple use your IPS Patcher to add
the changed data from the new version over the old one and the job was done. Changing Beta
version to Final , Jap towards US or PAL became very easy this way.

Fix me a Trainer

The first Trainer we made was for Tom &
Jerry, when I was disassembling it, I activated a cheatmode. Then the first Trainerscreen
was chucked together in a rush and released into the scene. More Trainers followed
quickly, when I heard of the release of a Action Replay Cartridge things changed , since
this cart made looking for addresses that changed ( Lives / Energy / Time etc.. ) a lot
easier. Even though this cart gave a lot of extra help, we still had to spend a shitload
of time finding out where it was changed ( increased / decreased ), and sometimes it was
very tricky to make it selectable from a Trainer Menu. Later on we came across some games
that didn't had any space free inside the game file itself. During the years the games
became bigger in size as well, and new copiers had to be bought. Every other game had PAL
checks on them, the game would check if the games was loaded into a JAP/US or PAL machine.
Same thing happened with PAL games that had NTSC checks on them. So fixes/cracks became
very necessary, almost every game needed a PAL/NTSC/Slowrom or Header fix. Since there
where several producers of Copiers , they all had there own way of saving the Rom Images
for example a ProFighter Copier would read out a game in a different way as a WildCard
Copier ( the copier would stick its Info in the Header ), so conversions were needed.

Music please !

On the Atari in the meanwhile an SNES
Assembler and a Snes-Tool were released and a Sound Converter was in the making to use
Midi Music that was made on a Keyboard to use in Intro's / Trainer Menu's. Some people
claimed it was all a piece of cake to produce anything with a Manual in your possession,
well for the music department that's not true at all, the info in the manual is hardly
worth mentioning. It took MCA and Radium several months to figure out the DSP chip that is
used in the Snes to program it. We finally had some funky music to use in our own
productions, without having to rip it out of a game.

Snes Utility for the Atari ST (.PRG format)

The Group

MCA ( coder / trainer maker )

Lowlife ( graphics )

Radium ( coder / musician )

Frosty ( UK HQ bbs / supplier / trader ) ,

Sledge ( group organizer / trainer maker /
WHQ bbs )

Iceman ( Germany HQ bbs / supplier )

Wonderboy ( coder of a PC Console utility,
and friend of Iceman )

BamBam ( supplier / Euro HQ bbs / importing
)

Dizzy ( coder )

The Doctor ( coder )

Sharon ( trader / importing )

Doc Hollywood ( supplier / trader )

Radio Active ( supplier / trader )

Anthony ( coder )

Jarre ( coder / supplier )

Grimlock ( trader )

Trainer making team : MCA & Sledge

Intro Department : Lowlife / Radium / Dizzy & Anthony.

Trading team : Frosty / Sledge / BamBam / Sharon / Grimlock

Importing team : BamBam / Sharon / Sledge

Release Team : Frosty / BamBam / Jarre / Doc Hollywood

Importing Japanese Games

Just a few weeks before Iceman got busted he gave me a list
of numbers of bbs's in Hong Kong that had plenty of Japanese games. These were the bbs's
that several groups took there Games from, to release them into the US / European Console
scene. The only thing needed for this activity was a good line to Hong Kong and some quick
spreaders. We managed to beat some of the " Big " groups on some of there Jap
releases , just to piss them of ! And to show them that every swinging dick could do this.
Most of these games were un-playable so they got released under the
SUSHI label , and some got released under the name COOL (
a BamBam production ). A few of these imports were done by Sharon, but most of them were
done by BamBam and Sledge. It was fun for a while, but in the long run a waste of time.

Console Wars

Meanwhile back in the Jungle, " Scene
Wars " were going on, groups were slagging each other for reasons which I will try to
explain here... Since we were not the first to do Trainers, the leading one at the time
Baseline ( they later on joined Anthrox ) was given a run for its money. SPEED became very
essential ! Since the Trainer Maker Division of Elitendo was based in Holland and Baseline
lived up in NYC / USA . This way they had a lot of games before we had them. Every group
that was involved in the Console scene had a HQ in the US, so all the trading and
spreading of the new software was going on the US. It was fighting against a time
difference. Then also add plenty of PAL checks and slowrom fixes, and a lot of time is
lost before you can finally dive into the code itself. When I look back on all the time
that me and MCA have spend on getting all those games Fixed and Trained.. we must have
been mad, or were we just Fanatics ? I don't regret it a single second do.. , it was a Fun
period of my life, all the fights with Anthrox. Taking the piss out of all these Big
Release Groups which were not that Awesome anyway, since every other sucker can read out a
game and upload it on a bbs.

Moving Targets

The Fights we had, were with a couple of
idiots from France called ICS. They had ripped our code to figure out how to join in the
Console Scene. These 'Enfants Terrible' were from the Atari Scene, and I already had a
Full Scale WAR with these fuckers, read the ELITE story about all that shit that went on
with them. They haven't lasted very long anyway .. a couple of months l8er..and they were
out on there ass. So who else did we had to deal with ? Mainly Anthrox and later on Cyber
Force.

Reason this..

There have been plenty of misunderstandings
about all kinds of things. Consider the fact that Intro's would not properly run on a PAL
or NTSC machine, other guys in the scene would ask if we could fix the games that Anthrox
added an Intro on to, since it wouldn't work on a PAL machine. So we would release fixes
that would kill there intro coz it was needed.

In the beginning there was a real problem
with getting the Trainers working properly on both US and PAL machines. Trainers that we
released would freeze up on a US machine or some other weird shit. Same deal for the
trainers done by Anthrox, who says its always the fault of the Trainer maker, ever heard
of Programming errors ? Beta versions of games that would simply crash after a few levels.
Rom Image Checksums , More hidden PAL or slowrom fixes.. Time Pressure ( a killer ! ) and
a Shitload of BUGS in the O.S.'s of the Copiers themselves as well. You see.. plenty of
factors that were never accounted for.

So 2 groups started to keep close taps on
each other to see if they could find any mistakes in what the other group would release. A
pretty silly game huh ? When I look back it has only been the guys involved in doing
Trainers/Demo's and Intro's and Utilities that have been creative, the guys who have been
reading out a lot of games have done a lot for the scene as well , since without there
work we never would have make the move towards the Snes. But being able to program and
manipulate it in the way you want is the real satisfaction !

Other Projects

Another project was a Magazine called
Console World, which came out every month as a text-file, with all the latest charts /
interviews / gossip / announcements etc. The writers of Console World were 2 members of a
group called Sneakers. After some talking on the phone with them, I came up with the idea
of a coded Snes version of C.W. ( why the hell not ? ) , after discussions with Dizzy /
Lowlife and Radium. The Elitendo Creation Team was on the case. After the first release ,
the reactions we got were very positive. After the second edition it became very quit from
the Canadian writers. Months later they came back with a couple of issues, and then it all
stopped. It would have been a bit hard to continue coz the original coder of C.W. quit and
left Elitendo to concentrate on coding on the PC.

You can D/L CONSOLE WORLD
here ! It's in .SMC format..I am working to get some screenshots of this 1st issue.

Releases

Elitendo has always been known for making
Trainers and Fixes, but we managed to crank out some Nice games as a First. Thanks to
Frosty for some inside contact we managed to release 3 games ( all Finals ) into the
scene, before anybody else could . The big shocker was Donkey Kong Country which everybody
wanted BADLY, no surprise there since the game was simply awesome. Thanks to Chaos for
suppl ying it , and BamBam for breaking every Traffic rule in the Book to get home in a
hurry to get this HOT one on the bbs's. We did also release several US games thanks to Doc
Hollywood and Radioactive, and several more Euro releases thanks to BamBam and Jarre.

PC Utilities

First PC Utility that was released was done
by Wonderboy and was mainly used for Slowrom fixing. A decent Utility was very badly
needed so Snes-Tool was converted / re-coded onto the PC. Since its release Snes-Tool has
seen 5 more updates. A lot of people have helped out over the years to get this program to
perfection. The only other thing that MCA finished through the last months of the
existence of Elitendo was the Final versions of the Snes Debugger and the SnesTool for PC.

Snes Utility v1.10 by MCA for the PC [DOS]

What Else ?

After 1/2 year of existence, Iceman had the
bad luck of getting busted , after that I haven't heard much of him and Wonderboy anymore.
For a few months we also had a Coder called Killer Bob that did code some sort of Intro,
but we couldn't use it, it was way to big.. and since he worked for a Software company he
didn't had much time to spare.., then BamBam joined us ( he had been a member of Hotline
on the C-64 ) . When I came across some utilities and some small demo's coded with our
Snes Assembler on the Atari ST, I was surprised . So after some digging around I came into
contact with Dizzy & The Doctor who joined later on. A while later a Trader called
Sharon who was at the time a member of Cyber Force asked if he could join, and he did so
for a 2 months period. Later on that year a friend of Lowlife asked if he could join as a
Coder, knowing his fame from the Demo Scene on Amiga it sounded as a good plan. While
Atari was going the way of the Dodo, almost every member of Elitendo was moving on to the
PC, that's also one of the reasons why we didn't do that much on the Trainer front
anymore. Most of us got Jobs, or were in their final year of college, so not much time was
left for making Trainers. Then also MCA had the bad luck to toast his Snes
+ Copier + Action Replay. And thanks to the Playstation and PC the games for the Snes were
rapidly drying up. Elitendo was officially declared death in the year of 96.

Greetings to the following groups
who were active at the time Elitendo was around